Craig Cackowski's Mainstage Notes

Craig Cackowski is currently in the rehearsal process for the next mainstage revue at The Second City. Since I enjoyed reading his notes on the creation of History Repaints Itself at Jason Chin's website, I asked Craig if he would be interested in doing another web journal. He said yes.

Enjoy.

[9/2/00] ....... [9/5/00] ....... [9/14/00] ....... [9/22/00] ....... [9/28/00] ....... [10/10/00] ....... [10/23/00] ....... [10/30/00] ....... [11/8/00] ....... [11/14/00] ....... [11/14/00] ....... [11/16/00]

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9/2/00

My name is Craig Cackowski and Jethro has asked me to write a journal about my experiences creating the new Mainstage show at Second City. Because I got a generally positive response writing a journal for the last show I did, History Repaints Itself, at the Second City ETC, because people in the improv community seem to have an endless fascination about what the process of writing a show at Second City is like, and because I found that writing the last journal actually helped me focus and better understand what the process of writing a show at Second City is like, I have agreed. I will try to write an entry every Monday (my one day off) detailing what the previous week has been like. It's already Friday, so that should give you, the reader, an indication of how faithful I will be toward that goal. We're also two weeks and three days into the process, so let me bring you up to date with what's happened so far.

Before This Show

I had been a member of the ETC for 2 1/2 years and had written 3 shows. ("Writing a show" at Second City basically means you were in the cast when the show opened; as we shall see, very little actually writing is done over the course of a process.) I had already decided to leave the ETC when they began rehearsals for a new show, so I was not only honored to be asked to do the Mainstage show, but also relieved that I could put off the larger career and life decision of what to do when I'm done at Second City. I was happy to be working with Angela Shelton and Sue Gillan, who did the last two ETC shows with me, and with Jeff Richmond, who directed them, again. Remaining from the old Mainstage cast were Rich Talarico, Tami Sagher, and Ed Furman. Rich is one of my oldest and best friends in improv, and we had never worked together in 5 years at Second City. Tami and I wrote a show at ETC together, and I quickly discovered that Ed is one of the easiest people to work with, both on- and off-stage.

I joined the cast a couple of weeks before rehearsal started, which means I would be doing Kevin Dorff's parts from Second City 4.0 until we had created new material to replace the old scenes. I hadn't done anyone else's parts since I replaced Rich in ETC, but Kevin's stuff is a blast to do. I particularly enjoy doing the scene Midnight, where the three guys play a middle-aged garage band getting back together. That is, once I learned how to play drums and sing at the same time. Sue took over Stephnie Weir's parts and Angela Susan Messing's. I think we were all happy to run the old show for a while, getting used to the scenes, and getting used to each other's improv in the sets before the rehearsals started.

First Rehearsal: August 15th

First day of rehearsal is usually pretty casual: we meet with our union rep from Actors' Equity, elect a union deputy (it's always me), sign new contracts, improvise a little to break the ice, and go around the room and talk about what we want the new show to be.

The shows that opened last December, 4.0 and History Repaints Itself, had the added pressure of the theater's 40th anniversary, so Jeff made it clear that there would be less pressure on this show, that management would be more hands-off, and we could basically do whatever the fuck we wanted. Because shows run a long time at Second City (The Mainstage might go nearly a year between openings), the tendency is to make each revue a reaction against the previous one (i.e.,"all I know is I'm not doing _________ again"). The consensus among the cast members, old and new, is that the current show is slick and professional, and a little isolated from the audience. We resolved that, If nothing else, the new show would be looser, more fun, and more joyous. And, because Jeff Richmond was directing, it would contain at least one Broadway chill moment.

We made it a goal to write this show in 12 weeks, which means it would open on 11/5. We shall see.

The First Week

Although we really, really wanted to start changing the running order around by at least plugging in some improv games, Jeff wanted to keep 4.0 intact for the first week, so rehearsal was used to improvise with the hope of finding some things we could play around with in the improv sets. One day, Jeff asked us to improvise scenarios like we would when we were kids, literally Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians, Planet of the Apes, etc. It was a blast. We discovered this format that Jeff likes to call Groups, where we tell a story by going from one group scene to another. We ended up pulling it out in several sets over the next couple weeks. In a montage of scenes in rehearsal, we ended up doing a group scene where everyone was in a 12-step group for egg addiction. We decided this might be fun to try as an improv game, getting a new object each time.

Rehearsals usually start by going over the improv set from the previous night. The format we've been using more often than not is to get a pad full of suggestions from the audience, using categories such as "Things Dogs Can't Do" and "Rooms That Never Made It Into Clue", then calling out a different suggestion from the pad for each scene. If we're trying out some works in progress that we discovered in rehearsal or in previous sets, we might call them out by title or attach a suggestion from the pad to them. We mention to the audience at the top that they might see some things we've already been working on. This seems awkward--will there be a different standard of judgment for the works in progress as opposed to the "pure" improv?--but the audiences don't seem to care too much. Anyway....we talk through the previous night's set, noting things we liked for future reference. We even go through our Switch (Freeze Tag) bits, in case there's the germ of a scene or blackout there. The first week, Rich and I did a scene off the pad where the location was a grape vat, and we were two wine stompers talking about the Pope. It was fun, and Jeff liked the relationship, so we put it down to try again in future sets. All the sets are videotaped by Craig Taylor, our stage manager, and we have an assistant director, Steve Lund, who will transcribe a scene for us if we so desire. So we tried Grape Vat in a couple of sets, coming back and watching the tape the next day to determine what bits we liked and honing the beats of the scene each time while leaving it open for new lines and beats to be discovered.

For our Sunday set, we tried what's known as an old school set: we took the suggestions before the second intermission, then took them backstage to prepare the set. That's how they used to it back in the day...the improvs had an ounce of pre-planning to them: a premise, a character, whatever. This allows us to put up scenes that rely on props and costumes that we can't put up in the regular sets. We put up a "geek" scene (where we're all propped out like crazy) called Beauty where we're all beauty school trainees at a school run by Eddie, and one called Beatlefest, where we're all nerds at said fest. We also tried to put up a couple of "topical" blackouts on Firestone tires and Gore's daughters that died hard. You live, you learn.

The Second Week

We started to plug new things into the show this week: 12-Step, Grape Vat, and a group scene called Shower where we're 3 married couples and Rich and Tami are getting a divorce. Scenes tend to have a different energy in the show as opposed to the set, where the audience is more likely to forgive things that are improvised. We had no idea if Grape Vat was show-worthy or not, but you gotta put it in there and give it a shot. Once something goes in, it can always go right back out. To our delight, it seemed to get the same laughs that it did in the set.

On Sunday, we had one of the alltime stinkass sets. We were all tired from the week, and the audience wasn't giving us much during the show, so we decided to table the things we wanted to try in the set and just "do some scenes and have some fun". Well, we did some scenes. We ended up doing Switch for what felt like 20 minutes. Oh, that sadistic Craig Taylor. Jeff actually had Steve transcribe that painful Switch, so if we need a laugh later in the rehearsal process, we can pull that out and remind ourselves of the good ol' days of the second week. Those nights happen, and you just have to shake them off. We're lucky that we get to redeem ourselves the next night. I remember starting at Improv Olympic and going three weeks between shitty Harolds.

The Third Week (so far)

On Tuesday, we had a bought house full of incoming freshmen to Lake Forest College. That tends to throw off the reads to things when a group is that homogenic. Shower got much less, maybe because none of the audience has been married yet(yeah, like I have). They also had the teenager habit of reacting with an "ooooh" after anything mildly controversial. My theory on this is that they have been conditioned by Jerry Springer and his ilk to do this and that they are not actually offended. As opposed to...

Wednesday night, where we had a corporate group of 40 (only a portion of the audience, thank God) get up and leave in the middle of a new scene the ladies are doing called Lunch. Maybe it was the line about Jewish doctors giving black babies AIDS. We can't be sure. Apparently, the VP of sales was so offended he made everyone in his group leave. This was a half-hour into the show. It was fun to watch it again on the tape...40 people standing up, downing their drinks, and walking out. Luckily, the rest of the house was great and loved the show.

Thursday, we took out 12-Step (we know it is what it is and can always go back in) and put Groups in the show for the first time, with the added convention that we had to finish it in 6 minutes, so we set an egg timer on the stage to let us know when time had elapsed. It was killing, and then the timer went off, I swear no more than 4 minutes in, so we felt a little naked since we were nowhere near resolving it. Tonight we're keeping it in, and alloting 8 minutes.

So that's where we stand at 5:20 PM on Friday, September 1st. We have two shows tonight (no set), two shows and a set on Saturday, and possibly two shows on Sunday since it's a holiday weekend. We should have a pretty good idea how the new stuff that's in the show is working by the end of this weekend. That's it for now.

Well, it's Tuesday morning and we're coming off a long, long weekend--double shows Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We normally have only an 8:00 show on Sundays, but they added one for the holiday weekend. We get paid for the extra show, but the downside is we lost a set, and while it's good to get another read on the new things in the show , we could use the opportunity the generate new material. I expect we'll be improvising a lot in this week's rehearsals, since we've thrown up most of the scene ideas we've already had, and they've either hit or they haven't.

A cool thing happened in Friday night's show. We've been working on a song designed to be sung at any point in the show when someone's cell phone goes off. We stop whatever scene we're doing, sing this huge number to tell them to turn off their phone, and resume the scene. We decided we would throw it into a set with an audience plant to see how it flew, and on Wednesday night we designated a scene (an improv with Rich and myself) to be interrupted by Jeff's cell phone, which Steve Lund would call from within the building. Except they couldn't get a signal on the phone, and Rich and I had started this dummy scene that we were sure would be interrupted at any moment. It actually turned out to be a fun scene, but no cell phone song. So...on Friday during the first show a cell phone rang just as we were starting the scene Cell, in which a cell phone goes off from within a coffin at a funeral. Although we hadn't discussed doing it during the show at all, Rich made the audible to go right into the song, and it got a huge response. It gave the rest of the show a great energy, as if it let the audience know that we're in control and we're aware of their presence and that they're in our capable hands for the next hour and a half. Obviously there's some kinks with the song that will have to be worked out, but it was an encouraging debut.

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9/14/00

We're down to about 7 things left from 4.0...with a couple more hopefully to go this week. The show is always strange when it starts to change, because a show is typically thematically balanced when it opens, and when you start to plug in new material, some it may be similar in tone or subject matter to one of the old scenes. But you need that old scene in there for "protection", because it's a sure laugh-getter that's been polished over the last 10 months, as opposed to a scene where the beats may be set, but is still being improvised and is far from finished. Rich and I tried a new scene called Bus Driver where he mentions his wife has cancer. But we still open the show with the breast cancer bit from 4.0. And when we do the old scene Hospital in the second act, where Rich is dying of lung cancer, the audience must be thinking, "Enough with the cancer already!" A little cancer goes a long way, but it's a hit you just have to take while the show is being written.

Our set will go up possibly as soon as next week, which is early as these things go. It's also being built off-site, and then assembled here, which is also new. That means we won't have to constantly re-block the show as the set is being constructed around us. Lyn Pusztai has been the set designer for the last several shows and she is brillant. This set will be very cool and should inspire us to create several scenes inspired by it.

9/22/00

The mantra for Jeff and the cast right now is "wait until the doors are here". Our new set will go up next week, complete with (I think) 7 doors. We're trying to create scenes that are more active, since we have a lot of scenes that are being done in chairs. But nearly every idea we have needs the doors, or we don't want to put it up now only to have to re-block it when the set goes up, so it's become a running joke that the doors will be our salavation.

We had a particularly successful set on Tuesday, in that we tried two works in progress and they both made the show on Wednesday, one closing the first act, and the other opening the second. Act openers and closers are the hardest things to find, it goes without saying, and they usually need to involve the whole cast. It was sad to see Midnight go, which was the scene from 4.0 where the 3 guys are a garage band getting back together in their 40's and playing their old "hits", which are improvised. It was Rich and Eddie's favorite thing to do, and it quickly became mine after I joined the cast. I wish we had known on Tuesday that it was going to be our last Midnight. Ed saide we should've smashed our instruments. Oh, well. You have to say goodbye to your favorite scenes sometime.

We're fudging the opening and closing of the show right now, by the way--opening with three "best of" blackouts that we knew from touring, and closing with an improv game, Conducted Story. The opener and closer of the show are typically the last things written, if they get written at all.

There's only a handful of things left from 4.0 at this point, and I honestly don't think we need any, but they provide a bit of protection. A lot of the new scenes we're creating are on the long side (although they'll all be cut down before opening), and 4.0 had a lot of shorter pieces that help to break up the rhythm of the show. Also, this early in the process there's no effort made to balance the new material (the themes of the scenes, who's playing with whom, who's playing what types of characters) and I think it's probably difficult for Jeff to put a good running order together with only our new stuff. Typically a scene will be tried in several different spots in the show before it finds a home.

If you want to see the show as a true work in progress and then compare it to what it's like when it opens, now's a good time to start coming (hint, hint). Incidentally, I heard 11/9 tossed around as an opening date.

9/28/00

I write this on a Thursday afternoon between rehearsal and show. Rehearsals have typically been ending around 4PM, and call is 8PM, so I usually go home in the interim. As we get closer to opening, rehearsals will run to 5PM or later, and I'll stay in the North and Wells area. When Monday is your only day off, a little time away from Second City can be a good thing. Jeff was hopped up on cold medication today, alternating bits of inspiration with fits of incoherence, so he sent us home to do some writing and thinking. The last two days have been new scene days, with the cast improvising off premises that people brought in. We're at the point now where enough pieces are in place that we can look at the show and see what kind of scenes we need; in our case, scenes that are more active, less reliant on blue humor, and more issue-oriented would be welcome. I brought in a scripted scene yesterday that we put in the show last night. It may surprise some people that we do precious little writing, the actual sitting down and putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). We do a lot of what Jeff calls left-braining: the people in the scene might go off and write a beat sheet to a scene that has been around for a while and needs some organizing, or perhaps sift through old tapes of the scene to remember good improvised lines, but rarely does anyone bring in a scene scripted from scratch. Even then, I made clear to my castmates that the script was a template for the scene. I didn't have an out, and I expected them to improvise. That's the beauty of working in an ensemble; my vision for the scene was specific enough that I wanted to do more than say "let's just improvise it and see what happens", but I'm not a good enough writer to fully realize that vision. I trusted the cast to come up with something better than I had given them, and they did. Anyway, the scene is called Managers, and it involves us as a series of retail managers, each with a bigger duct-tape mustache. I love getting into a serious discussion about the nature of artistic process, when ultimately it's about fake mustaches and the audiences will either find it funny or they won't.

Tomorrow will be devoted to putting in an understudy for Angela; she has a wedding this weekend and will miss some shows. It's very difficult to understudy at Second City, period, but doubly so during the preview process, when the scenes are in flux and there's no scripts. I had to go in for Scott Adsit at such a time, and it was no picnic (although, in truth, the slapped-together feeling of the show during previews puts less pressure on an understudy than the polished version after opening). Angela's understudy, Nyima, has been coming to see the shows and our AD Steve has typed up some scripts for her, but the scripts may be useless the second they're printed the way things change 'rond these parts. Last night Sue and I tried an entirely different permutation of our scene Baby, which opens the show. The original version had her as a mother having second thoughts about her baby after bringing her home, with me trying to calm her down. The new version has both of us totally unprepared for parenthood, which creates a more fun scene less dependent on conflict. Hey, looks like all those things I tell my IO class apply to sketch comedy, too!

I feel like our improv in the sets has gotten better--we were a little tight when rehearsals started, now it's playful again. You have to realize that when you're improvising to generate material that you're rarely going to find a scene that can be scripted verbatim from the improv. Instead, you're looking for the smallest of things, maybe just a moment or a line that a scene can be built around.

The show is now being promoted as "Previews for the 86th Revue" rather than "Second City 4.0".

10/10/00

(Gasp) Ok, I realize it's been ten days between entries, so clearly I've been derelict in my duties, and improvisors with boring day jobs are probably logging on and sighing, and are resorting to posting anonymous bits on the IRC board, so here goes.

As I write this, Jeff is sick and we have basically a day off today. He called a 2:00 music rehearsal so we can go over some songs with Ruby. As opposed to an scene, which you can improvise once in a set and then put directly into the show without scripting it, a song takes a little more forethought and rehearsal. You need lyrics, which have to be memorized (and which invariably someone forgets and has to sing LA-DA-DA-DA-DEE-DEE-DUM, which is always hilarious), and you need to go over it with Ruby to make sure you're on pitch and tempo. All this maty sound painfully obvious, but when rehearsal time is precious to begin with, you can see why it might be frustrating to work on a half-assed song idea. Last week we each had an assignment to write a song and bring in a cut from a CD that had a silent bit or scene attached to it. Three of those CD scenes ended up going right into the show, and at least one of them I guarantee will make the show(at least I hope so): a bit where Rich and Tami drive drunk in slo-mo. Putting those pieces in gives the show a nice added theatricality and helps to vary the tempo of the show, since at this point we have a bunch of loonng scenes that have yet to be trimmed down to their most efficient form.

Because we're still in the mode of trying to generate new material, some of the stuff that's been in for a while, and will probably make the show, ends up getting short shrift. We get notes at every rehearsal (and at half-hour call on weekends) and Jeff tends to focus on the newer or shakier stuff, which means he has confidence in the scenes he's not talking about and we'll get to them eventually in rehearsal. This can be frustrating, but it also gives us some freedom to play around with the scene adding or dropping beats, trying new lines, etc. Jeff will notice and tell us he liked this or that line, to restore something we intentionally dropped, or remind us of something we used to do that we've inadvertantly dropped. I'm thinking specifically of the bus driver scene that Rich and I are doing which has yet to have any rehearsal, and which Rich reminds Jeff about everyday, but I feel good about it and know that our opening night version will be the best it can be.

After three shows at ETC, where you do six shows and three sets a week, I'm really enjoying having eight shows and five sets on mainstage. The loss of a life is made up for by having more time to audience-test your material. At ETC, it felt like you spent Thursday's show remembering how you did it on Sunday, and you felt a lot more pressure in the sets for new stuff to hit. You can be more a little more leisurely improvising in the sets on mainstage, but hopefully not so leisurely that you're blowing it off! I think I said in my last entry that the sets have been pretty good lately as we've relaxed and just played.

We'll have to come with a title soon...the single biggest timekiller to the rehearsal process, as anyone who's sat around brainstorming names for your improv group can attest to.

10/23/00

I'm constantly surprised when people tell me they've been reading my journal, and even more surprised when they tell me they've been enjoying it (although I suppose that's obligatory), so I feel especially guilty that I've not written an entry in, oh, 13 days.

We do have an opening date set--Thursday, November 16th. That gives us 24 days, 15 rehearsals, 26 shows, and 17 sets to get it right. We brought in titles on Friday (our favorite was Ed's: Slaughterhouse 5, Cattle 0) and our producer Kelly Leonard asked for another list, so it's back to the drawing board on Tuesday. I personally could care less what the show as called, as long it doesn't give the audience an erroneous assumption as to what the show is about. The first show I did at ETC came on the heels of the Clinton scandal and was called If The White House Is A-Rockin', Don't Come A-Knockin'. We thought it was funny at the time and the show did have some political material in it, just no scenes where we were playing Bill and Monica. Audiences complained because they thought the whole show would be about the scandal. Who are we, the Capitol Steps? I can imagine nothing less interesting. Anyway, we learned our lesson from that. Kelly, I think, would like a title that is funny and bring in business. Jeff would like a title that is funny and reflects the themes of the show. The cast would like a title so we don't have to devote any more rehearsal time to it.

The set was painted on Saturday night by Craig Taylor and our set and costume designed, Lyn Pusztai. It looks great...bright, cheery colors, and I swear that it helped the show on Sunday. The colors of the set reflect the fun and the energy of the show and everything was getting great laughs from the beginning. Maybe it was just a good house, but I credit the newly-painted set. Soon we'll meet with Lyn to discuss costuming for the show...show clothes for the actors and possible costumes pieces for our characters, although in my case it probably won't involve more than choosing a color of tie, since I spent a lot of money on new clothes for the last ETC show.

We still don't have an opening or closing...the old blackouts protect us right now, but we are going to have to try something, and soon. We're also trying to incorporate our 7 doors as much as possible, so the sets have been partially devoted to premises based around the doors. Thematically things seem to be falling into place, although that's much more Jeff's concern than ours. He's very good at juggling the running order around, trying different combinations until one hits. It seems to work well to see the cast as more or less themselves early in the show, saving the more character-driven scenes for later.

Our assignment for tomorrow (aside from more show titles) is to put some thought into things that are already in the show...lines/beats to change or remove, more efficient ways of saying or doing something, or a new spin on a scene (adding a cutaway, tying it in with another scene, etc.) I personally feel that I need to step up my effort a little more. It's easy to get burned out during the process--you get sick of everyone in the cast, you feel creatively bankrupt, you lose perspective on the show--and I have a tendency to just relax between rehearsal and the show and in the morning. But it's crunch time now (and cliche time, apparently) and the reality is that once it opens, I'll be doing this show for eight months and I want to really like it and to feel that I own everything I'm doing and that I made every effort to make it as good as it could be. It's at the point where we're running out of time for new ideas, although if something hits hard in the set we'll take another look at it, and we've got to take a hard look at what we already have and ask if it's something we want to do every night for the next eight months.

This is a not a great time to ask me how the show is going. I'd be happy to talk about anything else: improv theory, the upcoming NBA season, films you've seen recently. But please don't ask about the show. Come see for yourself and tell me. 'Cause I have no idea.

10/30/00

Alright, it turns out the show will be called Slaughterhouse 5, Cattle 0 after all. We all agreed it was a funny title; now we just have to deal with audiences members wondering where was the Kurt Vonnegut parody and the skewering of the meat industry. Hey, there's still two and a half weeks to write one!

Over the weekend, Jeff decided to make some crazy changes to the running order, throwing in a couple of things that we had seen in sets recently to see if they had legs(including a scene I never though would go in a show...Monkey Proctologist), and pulling out a couple of pieces that had been in for a while. This does a few different things. For one, it makes the whole show feel more spontaneous when there's a scene in which you don't know what the beats are, much less what the out is. Scenes that have been in for a while can also have a different feel according to where they're placed in the running order. My scene with Rich in the CTA bus had always been in the middle of the first act and it opened the second act on Sunday, seeming to get more of a reaction than ever (though you never know until you've done it a few times what you can attribute to the running order, to that night's audience, or to your own execution). Finally, I didn't mind taking Grape Vat and Pirate out of the show for a night or two. Although they're working fine and will probably make the show, it's easy for a piece to feel stale before the show even opens. Grape Vat was one of the first things we improvised back in August and we're still using lines from the first time we improvised it. Giving it a couple days off could refresh the scene, maybe even allowing us to take a fresh approach to it.

Tomorrow is press photo day, where we'll take some generic pictures of the cast as well as shots of some particular scenes, for publicity and for the Second City archives. On Thursday, we meet with Lyn to go over costume choices for the show, making sure the palette of our show clothes compliments what she's done with the set, and seeing if any of the characters we play need any costuming touches.

I really feel pretty good about where we're at, similar to the last process I went through with ETC. Having a cast that's been through all this before helps, as does having an experienced director like Jeff. There haven't been any major flare-ups, nor have we spent an inordinate amount of time working on a scene none of us can stand, as always seems to happen. Knowing that everyone in the cast is represented well and that we have a number of solid pieces in place gives us the luxury of using these last two weeks to fine-tune and solidify, rather than frantically trying to come up with material. As we get closer to opening, my entries will probably become shorter, but more frequent. Is that OK with you?

11/8/00

It's between rehearsal and show on Election Day and I just returned from voting for Al Gore to put fingers to keyboard yet again. After today's rehearsal, we have 5 more left, along with 10 shows and 7 sets, so time is precious. Over the weekend, we got notes from Sheldon Patinkin, the Artistic Consultant to Second City(and the author of the 40th anniversary book that was just published). Sheldon has been with SC since the very beginning, so he's a good link to our history and tradition. Typically, he sees the show about two weeks before opening, so he can see it when it's close to a finished product, but so we have enough time to make changes if necessary. His notes are about a third dead-on, a third thought-provoking, and a third puzzling, and he tells us we can take it all with a grain of salt. His main complaint was the lack of politics in the show, which has been difficult to handle, since we won't know until tomorrow who the next President will be and, considering this show will run at least seven months, we want to make sure whatever we do has a nice long shelf life. (And, as I think I've seen before, the last thing I want to do is do an impression of a real politician; SNL can do it so much better, and it's my experience that politics is a turn-off to audiences in the year 2000). Sheldon's other main observation was that Van, our second act run-out scene with a series of stereotypes was borderline racist when racism is the satirical target. we needed to give it a context to make our point of view clear and allow the audience to laugh. Van has also been linked to this song, Jingo, that Rich and Ed have been doing about American superiority. Mick Napier also watched our show this weekend and, although he didn't give us notes face-to-face, met with Jeff to brainstorm ideas for the show, particularly the second part of the second act, which hasn't led up to as big a payoff as we would hope.

We addressed some of those things in today's rehearsal. Rich had been kicking around a blackout idea about an ad for a political candidate, and Jeff thought the candidate could be both Rich's character in Jingo and a device to link up the different segments in Van so it's clear the stereotypes are coming from his perspective and are not a point of view the cast is espousing. I'll find out how all this plays out in a few hours, but it feels like a good starting point and the cast really worked hard today to make it happen. Most exciting, it allows us to end the show with a callback to some earlier moments in the show, and to cut the classic blackout Bagpipe and Conducted Story, which we have been closing the show with for weeks now. Jeff also gave us an assignment for tomorrow to bring in other ideas for callbacks and connections between the scenes. It's those things that have been a staple of the shows since "Pinata Full Of Bees", and they really help it feel like a piece of theatre rather than a revue (although we're still considered a revue by the Jeff Committee). We have so many fantastic elements in the show(bears, Ninjas, pirates, etc.), and considering the literary reference in our title as well as the appearance of various authors , I would love if the whole show felt like we were telling the audience a story. I haven't thought it out, but whatever I suggest tomorrow will be along those lines. I'm also reading "Breakfast Of Champions" to see if Vonnegut inspires anything that can help with the show.

All this stuff we worked on today may bomb tonight, but morale is reasonably high, and we're all excited to put the finishing touches on this baby and open it.

11/14/00

Well, we're almost done. The addition of Mark Brown(that's the political ad piece) as a runner throughout the show has really helped. Mick and Sheldon came back on Sunday and pronounced their approval. The second act is solid from start to finish and the first act is getting there. This is a great time to have Jeff Richmond as your director because he kicks it into another gear just as we're getting brain-dead. We came in on Monday, our day off, to rehearse (under Equity rules, we had to agree by silent vote) because Jeff had a couple of song ideas...a barbershop quartet to get out of Managers and a ukulele number to close the show. He had already written the lyrics and the tune for us, so we just had to go over it again and again until we were comfortable. We'll add them to Tuesday night's show.

This is the final chance to go over minutiae: lines that could be trimmed down/taken out/improved, moments that don't feel quite right, connections we can make between the scenes. Jeff also works with Craig and Ruby to add lights and sound that might further compliment the show. Lyn is still bringing in potential costume pieces to add to our characters. If someone has a line they're saying that they don't quite like, they might just try something different in every show 'til one hits, or they might ask the rest of the cast for advice. We're actually pretty good at brainstorming lines for each other; the whole Mark Brown thing was written in about ten minutes as we tossed around ideas. It's amazing: I don't have the faintest desire to sit down and write something, nor do I want to write comedy for a living, but it's so easy and fun to riff off of other people's ideas. My heightening instincts as an improvisor kicking in, I suppose.

So these are our last two previews the next two nights...the house wasn't sold out (it sometimes doesn't on Tuesday and Wednesday), so I invited a bunch of friends from IO. It's good to get feedback from people I trust (and hopefully, it'll be positive feedback) and get some laughers out there. It's too late in the process to have a soft crowd that doesn't give a good read on how things are working. Opening night is weird because there's very few real audience members in the house: press, friends of Second City, the cast's friends and family make up most of the house. It's the one show where your A level laugh lines get B level laughs (because the improvisors and the critics are too hip for the obvious jokes), and the C level laughs lines get A level laughs (because the audience knows us and gets our more clever/obscure/subtle/lame attempts at comedy). You say to yourself "Hey, that line's funny after all!" and then it gets nothing for the next eight months.

11/16/00 - Opening Day

I'm sitting at home at 10:00 on a Wednesday night because we got an unexpected night off tonight. Tami came to rehearsal not feeling well, started throwing up, and had to go to the emergency room to get fluids. Although it looked likely she would be able to do the show, she clearly wouldn't be in peak shape. After weighing our options: putting in an understudy(nearly impossible--no scripts exist yet and there's several things in the show that we just added that we're not proficient in yet), doing a combo best-of/scenes from the show that don't include Tami/improv games show(also tough: we would expend a lot of energy putting together a running order, running lines for old scenes, etc.), or taking the night off and putting in a touring company. To our surprise and relief, Kelly and Jeff decided on the latter. We did get a lot done in rehearsal even without Tami: running the new songs, re-blocking some transitions, changing some Mark Brown beats, and staging some images to go along with my final narration that leads into the closer. It's a little scary because we lose our last chance to take a look at the material in front of an audience, meaning several things will be seen for the first time by our opening night crowd. Also, Jeff's intention was to finish the hard work today and come in at, say, 5:00 on opening night just to run transitions. Now, we'll have a full-fledged, possibly grueling, rehearsal tomorrow. But, let me tell you, having the night off tonight should work wonders for everyone's energy and morale.

Some of you may recall last year that Talarico threw his back out just before opening. He did the actual first opening night(there were two last year because of the 40th anniversary), but Greg Mills went in the night before opening, the second opening and, if memory serves, the rest of the weekend. So this is par for the course 'round this crazy place.

Incidentally, the only other time I can recall a Mainstage performance being cancelled was when I was a TourCo understudy and Adam McKay, Scott Adsit and Jenna Jolovitz were auditioning for SNL, as was Bill Chott, whom I had understudied in BlueCo. Their flight was delayed, and BlueCo went in with a couple hours notice, with me doing Bill's parts.

I'm giving the cast copies of "Slaughterhouse Five" as opening night gifts. Shhhh.

I'll see you at the party. I'll let you know how everything went when this weekend is over.

by Darel Jevens

First you're at Ameritech as cyborgs attack a waitress fed up with her dead phone line. Then you're at the Denny's where she works. Then you're at "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire." Then you're at a high school, witnessing a round of brutal peer abuse--by faculty.

And that's just the first scene.

Sure, I've spoiled a few punch lines in Second City's new mainstage revue. And I'll spoil a few more. Why not? This show can afford it. Gags spill forth by the hundreds in "Slaughterhouse 5, Cattle 0," a splendidly entertaining effort by comic specialists at the top of their games. It's rare that one of these shows gets a director and a cast so attuned to their skills yet still so eager to please. Enjoy it while you can.

"Slaughterhouse" is an exercise in imagination. Scenes seem to happen in a parallel universe where silly reigns supreme, a land where the Hulk flies first-class, where ballots are punched with blow darts, where a man dreams of spending $1 million on a million lottery tickets so he can have a 1-in-19 chance of winning. It's as though the performers can't wait to show you the next wacky thing they thought up.

You see it in the wide grin worn by Craig Cackowski as a bus driver, another of the cheerful extroverts that have become his trademark. You hear it in Angela Shelton, brandishing the rich and varied dialects and personalities she seldom gets to flaunt on Channel 11's "Cheap Show." You feel it in the booming rumble of Rich Talarico as Mark Brown, a candidate unafraid to rub your face in his wretched ideology.

Like "History Repaints Itself," the recent Second City e.t.c. show from which half this cast came, "Slaughterhouse" dissects racial issues with a chain saw. When a bride-to-be stereotypes her best friends, a black woman and a Jew, they don't grouse--they make a game of it, amusing each other by upping the ante. And the bigoted Brown's prejudices aren't just spoken, they're fully acted out, to give our knee-jerk acceptance of ethnic humor a reality check straight out of "Bamboozled."

Director Jeff Richmond, the man behind the e.t.c. show and several other recent Second City triumphs, has perfected a breakneck formula that keeps the mind constantly engaged. Scenes tumble right into each other, and forgotten characters pop back up just in time to turn a moment upside down. Seven doors back up the set, two of them elevated and used to good effect when an old-timer (Ed Furman) decides to hide out in a tree. The show being what it is, he can only be talked down by a sea captain with a monkey paw for a hand.

The doors fling open "Laugh-In"-style during one of the most uproarious bits as great authors read works from their mundane early jobs. Menu entries by Hunter S. Thompson (Furman) and overdue bill notices by Maya Angelou (Shelton) are just plain funny. But the one who charms us most, and later returns to send off the show, is Cackowski's Dr. Seuss. His merry mood is not far from this show's, a delirious whimsy that is sure to leave Second City visitors very happy.

by Chris Jones

If Ameritech is planning an employee outing this holiday season, the beleaguered utility might want to skip the 86th revue at The Second City. And unless its collective sense of humor extends to wicked gags about bus drivers without licenses, the Chicago Transit Authority also should party elsewhere.

The recent troubles of both of these long-suffering institutions are lampooned with delicious abandon in "Slaughterhouse 5 Cattle 0," the generally mainstream but nonetheless smart and funny new revue that's a worthy heir to the continued high standards of the Second City mainstage.

The opening night crowd on Thursday roared with especially cathartic laughter at an inspired opening scenario in which an enraged Ameritech customer breaks into the dark, hidden world of customer service only to discover that the place is run by a godlike figure called Miscellaneous Charges.

Other delicious moments include a piece purporting to expose the two-bit writing jobs once performed by great literary figures. Thus we hear bank overdraft notices penned by Maya Angelou; obituary notices in the guise of Dr. Seuss; and Hunter S. Thompson writing menu descriptions for Denny's.

This new revue marks some big changes on the mainstage. Former cast member Kevin Dorf is now writing for Conan O'Brien; Stephnie Weir is in the employ of Mad TV and Susan Messing has moved into directing. That means there are three newcomers -- Craig Cackowski, Sue Gillan and Angela Shelton -- joining the established mainstage cast of Tami Sagher, Rich Talarico and Ed Furman.

If this group can stay together for a while, cohesion will build (things felt a little tense on opening). But it's already great to see the talented Sagher's quieter smarts gaining more focus this time around. And newcomer Gillan is a name to watch for the future -- her feisty energy is just right for television

Speaking of television, director Jeff Richmond is about to marry Tina Fey (now co-anchor of the "Weekend Update" segment of "Saturday Night Live"), so there's also speculation that this may be one of last shows. Richmond, whose great strength lies in verbal humor, would be a great loss.

As compared with Mick Napier's more visually and thematically radical productions, Richmond and his cast rely more on the kind of clever and witty lines that get rolling laughs as more people in the audience figure out the gags. There are a few of Second City's familiar targets on display (supermarket managers, first dates, line-cooks) and political aficionados may wish the show had chosen to take on the Floridian escapade more directly (it barely gets a mention).

But Second City never likes jumping on a familiar bandwagon and this show chooses instead to create a fictional politician with a penchant for negative -- and exceptionally funny -- campaigns.

Richmond and his crew pay attention to details and complex ideas. The result is a consistent, smart and sassy show.

Epilogue

Well, the show is open now, and we can all go back to our normal lives...in my case, watching movies all day and showing up at 7:30 for work (I always call it "work" out of habit, which confuses improvisors when I run into them on the El and they ask where I'm going, and they say "Oh...you mean you're going to do your show"). The opening went better than any opening for any show I've done at Second City. The execution was just about perfect. It turns out taking Wednesday night off was a blessing, because we came in on Thursday rested, healthy, and ready to go. Jeff re-blocked all the transitions for the show, we ran the closing song several times, went through notes on all the scenes, and blocked a curtain call. We were dismissed at 4:00 (during the whole process I don't think we ever rehearsed more than three hours at a time, which was great) and had to be back at 7:30 (early show on opening night to accommodate the press). I was the least nervous for any show I've done, mostly because I felt so good about the material, there weren't a lot of last-minute changes or additions, and nothing could be more nerve-racking than last year's 40th anniversary opening. I have to say that each rehearsal process has gotten easier, and that each show I've done has been better, or at least more fun personally. A lot of that can be attributed to having Jeff as director for the last three shows...he's gotten better and more confident at his job each time as well...and to being so comfortable with the people in the cast (three straight shows with Sue and Angela, knowing Talarico for eight years). The reviews have been great so far...highly recommended in the Sun-Times, Tip of the Week in NewCity, four stars from Gay Chicago, a positive review from the Trib. But most importantly, for a show that will probably run eight months, it's going to be a lot of fun for us to do. The second act seems to fly by in minutes and Bus Driver is probably my favorite scene I've created so far at SC. Here is the running order of the show and a few comments on each scene...you may want to see the show first if you want to be surprised by what you see.

ACT ONE

AMERITECH- Tami breaks into the inner sanctum of Ameritech customer service to try to get her phone service hooked up. My memory is failing me as to where this came from...I'm pretty sure it came up in an improv set and we kept the basic premise from when we improvised it. This closed the first act for a while, but Jeff decided it would be a great, weird, epic energy to kick off the show with.

MILLIONAIRE- A premise Rich brought in...what happens when a guy who loses on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" has to go back to his shitty job the next day. This was originally basically a two-person scene between Rich and myself that Jeff expanded as a way to meet the whole cast. The cutaway to the show was there from the beginning, and we added the cutaway to high school as a way to get out about a week before opening.

YAHTZEE- A first date scene with Ed and Tami. They found this in an improv set only a couple weeks before opening.

BABY- A couple (Sue and myself) is unprepared for parenthood. Sue had this idea based on something we improvised in an ETC set months ago. Jeff added the full cast at the beginning to see all of us again, and as a means to call back the same image in Shower to close the act, which also involves a baby.

THOMPSON- Ed had a brilliant monologue as Hunter S. Thompson, so Jeff gave us an assignment to each write a monologue as a well-known writer moonlighting. Originally, we also had Tami as Sylvia Plath and Sue as Shakespeare, but those got cut for time. Talarico is hilarious as Mark Twain, providing the linking device for the monologues.

LUNCH- Angela and Tami are Sue's black and Jewish bridesmaids meeting for the first time. This was a scene idea the ladies had fairly early in the process, and it went into the show right away and was, and is, a good anchor for the show.

MANAGERS- Mustached managers display retail inefficiency at its finest. I had this idea walking to rehearsal one day, knowing how much Talarico likes tape mustaches. Mick Napier, when he first saw it, said the four of reminded him of a barbershop quartet, and Jeff obliged by writing a song for us about four days before opening.

MARK BROWN I- This was an idea Talarico had watching negative campaign ads during the election...what if the scary ads were for the candidate? As we realized we'd probably be taken to task for not being political enough, this became a runner throughout the show. We brainstormed dozens of different images for the ads, and we have the option of changing some of them up over the run of the show.

PIRATE- We had an assignment form Ruby to bring in a cut from a CD that inspired a scene or a blackout. I had recently bought the Robert Shaw Chorale doing a capella sea shanties, powerful and hilarious at the same time. I played the cut for everyone, not knowing what I wanted to do other than be pirates, and Rich had the idea to make it an office fantasy. Craig Taylor came up with the out.

SISTERS- Sue and Tami had these characters almost from the beginning of the process, and tried them in all sorts of permutations before coming up with the video dating angle.

AIRBAG- Rich's idea from the same assignment that Pirate came from. Really cool track to do a slow-motion car crash to.

BEARS- Bear mauls camper, campers bonk bear on nose. This was Rich's idea for a group scene based on the Worst-Case Scenario Survivors' Handbook (I think that's the name of the book), which tells you what to do in various disaster situations, like being attacked by a bear. We tried many different outs for this one, Jeff finally setting on a callback to Maya Angelou.

SHOWER- Dysfunctional couples extraordinaire. This was something we improvised on the second day of rehearsal, that went into the show the first week, and that we had a love/hate relationship with throughout the process, as tends to happen with the first thing you come up with. It went through many incarnations, the longest being 13 minutes with a minute-and-a-half pause at one point. We streamlined it to its final version, where it's still fairly long but moves quickly, up to the run-out that callback Baby and then Mark Brown. If you're wondering about the name, it was originally a wedding shower when we improvised, and the name shower stuck, as these things tend to do around SC (see "Van" later).

ACT TWO

BUS DRIVER- A scene with me and Rich as two old guys trading places on a bus. Early in the process, Rich had an idea for a song that we could sing whenever an audience member's cellphone disrupts the show. We all wrote song lyrics for it, and Rich and Jeff came up with an nice, short cellphone song. We pulled it out in a couple of sets (and once in the show) organically, it went great, and then we returned to whatever scene we were doing before the cellphone went off. We wanted to see if it had the same effect if the cellphone was a plant, so we could sing the song in the show every night (if nothing else, to declare to the audience that this was our theater and we were in control). So Jeff gave our AD, Steve Lund, his cell, planted him in the audience for the set, and was going to call him so we could sing the song. We needed a "dummy" scene that could be interrupted, and it turned out to be me and Rich. We got the suggestion bus, and started improvising, knowing any minute we'd be cut off by the phone. But it never rang. They couldn't get a signal. And the scene we improvised turned out to be my favorite in the show. Sometimes the best improv happens when you're utterly relaxed and not thinking too hard about what you're doing or saying. Rich also managed to throw in a magic trick that he had wanted to do in the last couple shows. This scene is kind of the thesis for the dream theme that runs through the show.

KNOCK- A cop tells jokes to a couple looking for their missing kid. This was an idea Eddie had on a new scene day, and it was pretty much the way it is now from the beginning, but with different jokes. Callback to Bus to get us out.

ATM or PINJA- Ninjas attack a guy at the ATM. Rich's idea. I like that it gets a couple strong laughs at the top, making the audience think it's going to be about something else. A MacGuffin, if you will. Good luck to Susie's understudy, doing all those roundoffs.

TREE- This was something that almost died. It came up as a pure improv in a set, and Jeff kept mentioning how much he liked the image of an old man in a tree, not knowing why he's there. We tried it a couple more times and it didn't really go anywhere. In one of the sets, we decided that we would take turns leaving the scene to change into other characters, grabbing wacky costumes and props(we were on a kick of "How many characters can the six of us play in one scene?"). Rich grabbed a captain's hat and this paw that had been cut off a stuffed toy monkey. He was waiting in the wings, where Eddie could see him, and Sue came out to deliver a pizza, which looked like it was going to be the out of the scene. I was watching Rich from the other wing, and he was about to take his props off when Eddie said "The only one I listen to is ol' Captain Monkey Paw" to make Rich enter. Well, we kind of forgot about the scene, but I really liked the idea of it, so I volunteered to take the tapes home and work up a script for it to give us a template. We had to keep Monkey Paw, of course, and then Jeff wrote a song for me to sing which, incidentally, was originally a Cat Stevens song (until Ruby nixed it because of the Cat Stevens references in "Pinata Full Of Bees") and a Harry Chapin song (until we decided he wasn't well-known enough), before we settled on Neil Diamond again. Incidentally again, we did a scene in the set a couple months ago where I was Cat Stevens and Rich was the ghost of Harry Chapin helping a little girl played by Tami. '70s singer-songwriters being a close third to superheroes and Bill Cosby as recurring characters in our sets.

MARK BROWN II/JINGO- More of the Mark Brown ad, that goes directly into Rich and Eddie's song. They came up with it when Ruby gave us a song assignment in rehearsal one day, and it went right in to the show, but never had a context until we had the Mark Brown character. I like doing the James Brown thing with the American flag. Ed is a great bass player, isn't he? And that electric stand-up is really cool.

BITCHIN' I- Angela goes for a ride in Eddie's car, not knowing him that well. I believe this was an idea of Eddie's that we first tried in a set. The full name is Bitchin' Camaro, which is a Dead Milkman song, and the car that he's driving.

FIRST CLASS- This was an idea of Angela's that came as a godsend late in the process. Sue and Ed are priceless tards. Tami calling me "Mr. Alexander" got a huge laugh on opening night. And the green light at the end is really awesome. If you saw the show, you know what I'm talking about.

BITCHIN' II/VAN- We cut back to Ed and Angela in the car, then Mark Brown leads us into a series of ethnic stereotypes. We were coming up with group scenes early on, Angela had an idea of us all being Mexicans in a van (thus the name). This was then expanded into other minorities: blacks, Arabs, Scandinavians, Chinese. Using Mark Brown as a connecting device hopefully makes it clear that racism is the satirical target, rather than us being racist.

CLOSER- Jeff asked me to write some Dr. Seuss lines to close the show, which I brought in the day before opening, and which Jeff added imagery to on opening day. Jeff had been obsessed with having the cast play ukuleles since the "History Repaints Itself" process, and he wrote a beautiful song for us to sing while we strummed.

And we out. Thanks to Jethro for asking me to do this and for posting it, and thanks to everyone who's been reading this and giving me feedback. Come see the show.

Craig

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